Comedy Shorts - 4. In the Name of the Moon… We Sing!

Yuki, 22-year-old exchange student from Osaka, had been in Dublin for precisely six days — five of which were spent nodding politely at people she didn’t understand and surviving on a diet of digestive biscuits, supermarket sushi, and accidental coleslaw.

She missed karaoke. She missed rice. She missed silence that didn’t come with drunk shouting from a passing hen party.

So when she spotted a flyer taped to the cracked window of the university café that read:
“KARAOKE NIGHT – Tuesday – Murphy’s Pub” — she stared for a long moment and thought: Yes!

That night, she convinced her best friend Aiko to come with her.

“There will be music,” Yuki promised. “People. Maybe even tea.”

Aiko gave her the look of a woman who knew this was how horror movies start. “I Googled this place,” she said slowly. “It’s a gay bar.”

Yuki blinked. “Oh. That’s fine, right?”

“I mean, yes. Technically. But they’ll think we’re here to drink pink cocktails and post selfies with drag queens we can’t name”

Yuki, ever the optimist, patted Aiko’s arm. “We’ll just sing one song. Then we leave. No drama.”

***

There was, of course, immediate and catastrophic drama.

Murphy’s Pub sat between a vape shop and a pawn store, its rainbow flag half-faded but valiantly fluttering in the Dublin drizzle. Inside, the air shimmered with gin, glitter, and the sharp tension of gay men emotionally preparing to rip a karaoke act to filth.

They stepped through the door. And the room turned.

Two tiny girls. One pink umbrella. Matching wool coats. Silence. Sip. Judging.

The bartender — tall, silver-haired, and looking like he once posed for a cologne ad called Regret — raised a skeptical brow.

“You here for someone?”

Yuki smiled. “We’re here for karaoke.”

He stared. Then sighed and pointed to the signup sheet. “Good luck, sweethearts. You’re gonna need it.”

They sat in the corner clutching half-pints of Guinness like it was weaponized soy sauce.

A man in a mesh tank top howled Madonna’s “Hung Up” like he was casting a demon out. Another sang “Valerie” so beautifully it made a man in a harness openly weep. A third attempted Adele. There were casualties.

Aiko clutched her ears. “We should leave.”

Yuki shook her head. “We stay. For karaoke. For honor.”

“For what?”

Then came the voice: “Next up: Yuki and Aiko… singing Fly Me to the Moon.”

The announcement hung in the air like a fart in an elevator.

A glass clinked. Someone coughed. A voice near the bar whispered, “Oh no. Jazz.” Another sighed, “Are they gonna whisper it?” A third muttered, “I’ve seen this episode of Drag Race. It ends in tears and a broken mic.”

Two tiny girls approached the mic like sacrificial virgins. Yuki clutched the mic with both hands like it might bite. Aiko looked ready to faint directly into the kick drum.

The music started. “Fly me to the moon…” Yuki whispered.

It was soft. Shy. The vocal equivalent of a handwritten apology on pastel stationery.

“Let me play among the stars…” Aiko followed, a quarter-beat off, eyes wide like a deer observing an approaching truck.

A polite cough. A Grindr notification so loud it got applause. A guy muttered “Alexa, play anything else.”

Then—The shift.

The karaoke screen flickered. The lights twitched. And the fog machine — dormant all night — coughed violently and blasted a majestic cloud of dry ice right between their feet.

A soft glow bloomed around them — maybe a lighting glitch, maybe fate. The mic in Yuki’s hand rose slightly, as if lifted by the spirits of divas past. Aiko’s bangs caught a beam of rogue strobe and sparkled like destiny.

They turned. Locked eyes. Something ancient stirred. “Do we…?” Aiko’s look asked. Yuki gave the tiniest nod. “Let’s do the thing.”

POSE. For a moment, Yuki could swear she saw herself spinning in midair, surrounded by cherry blossoms and a piano solo. But maybe that was just the dry ice.

Yuki raised her mic skyward like it was a moon wand and she was about to shout “In the name of the moon, I will SLAY YOU!” Aiko opened her palm, glowing faintly with untapped jazz power. Neither remembered practicing. But their bodies knew.

“In other words… hold my hand…”

Their voices — now crystalline, confident, transcendent — floated through the lounge like velvet carried on glittered wings.

The crowd stopped breathing. One man dropped his gin and whispered, “What... the hell…”

They sang like possessed angels. Harmonies locked in. Eyes sparkling. Coats glowing. Hair caught in the wind from the bar fan that wasn’t even on before.

They weren’t just good. They were divine.

By the bridge, a man sobbed into his vodka cranberry. By the final chorus, two exes in the back held hands and quietly reconciled. The bartender? Clutching the edge of the bar, whispering, “We’ve been Jigglypuff’d. By angels in wool coats.”

And as they hit the last line— “In other words… I love… youuuuuuu…”

A single shard fell from the disco ball above them. One. Perfect. Piece. It landed on the mic stand with a delicate plink.

SILENCE.

Then—Detonation.

Screaming. Applause. Someone threw a feather boa. A man in his fifties fell to his knees and cried, “I CAN’T GO BACK TO MY OLD LIFE. I’VE SEEN TOO MUCH. I’VE HEARD TOO MUCH. THEY HARMONIZED ME INTO ENLIGHTENMENT!”

Even the bartender clapped. With both hands. He had never clapped before.

Yuki and Aiko just stood there, stunned. Still glowing. Still holding their mics like magical wands. Aiko whispered, “Did we just… win karaoke?”

Yuki blinked. “In the name of the moon, we…. harmonized evil into submission.”

The bartender appeared like a shimmering apparition.

“Free drinks,” he said, solemn as a priest. “Forever. I didn’t believe in soul resonance until tonight.”

Someone in the back started chanting “FLY ME! FLY ME!” Others joined. It quickly devolved into loud emotional wailing and a conga line.

***

Later, in the soft chill of the Dublin night, the girls wandered home in a daze.

“I feel weird,” Aiko said.

Yuki looked at her still-sparkling sleeve. “Same.”

They paused.

Aiko asked, “Do you think we... transformed?”

Yuki nodded slowly. “Magically. Accidentally. Unapologetically.”

A beat.

“…We’re coming back next Tuesday, right?”

Yuki grinned. “Every. Damn. Week.”